ananyo writes: Scientists have developed a way to carve shapes from DNA canvases, including all the letters of the Roman alphabet, emoticons and an eagle’s head. The shapes were made from single strands of DNA just 42 letters long.Peng Yin of Harvard Medical School, the leader of the study (abstract), says that “any technological applications are highly speculative”. But he thinks he could create DNA tiles using L-DNA, a mirror-image form of the classic double helix that is not found in nature. Such structures might be useful for designing nano-scale devices for delivering drugs, especially because they would be less likely to be broken down by DNA-cutting enzymes or trigger an immune reaction.The new technique represents a step forward from DNA origami, which uses much longer strands and smaller DNA staples to hold the strand in place.